When comparing Barnes & Noble NOOK Books vs eBooks.com, the Slant community recommends eBooks.com for most people. In the question“What is the best eBook store?”eBooks.com is ranked 5th while Barnes & Noble NOOK Books is ranked 9th. The most important reason people chose eBooks.com is:

eBooks.com allows for users to purchase gift certificates online worth 10-100 dollars and will then e-mail said certificate to an e-mail address of the purchases choosing along with a customized message.

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Pros

Pro

Send eBooks as gift

The NOOK store allows users to send eBooks as gifts to their friends and family.

Pro

Self publishing

B&N offers a way for users to self publish their eBooks to the NOOK eBook store, the service is called NOOK Press.

Pro

NOOK app

B&N offers a NOOK app for Android, iOS and Windows 8 in their respective stores. This allows user to shop and read their eBooks natively on those operating systems.

Pro

Send gift certificates

eBooks.com allows for users to purchase gift certificates online worth 10-100 dollars and will then e-mail said certificate to an e-mail address of the purchases choosing along with a customized message.

Pro

Academic Books

eBooks.com offers academic eBooks on their store that are claimed to be from the world's leading scholarly and academic book publishers.

Pro

Free excerpts

eBooks.com offers free excerpts for their more popular eBooks. This way users can get a feel on how the title reads and what it's structure looks like.

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Cons

Con

No legacy Windows app or Mac app

While B&N use to offer a PC and Mac app for the desktop, they pulled support officially in 2013.

Con

Higher prices then competition

Part of the reason B&N is having so much trouble with the NOOK brand currently and most likely part of its decision to separate itself from it by spinning it into its own company is that since the demolishing of agency pricing they are unable to compete on prices.

Con

B&N not confident in NOOK brand

B&N will be spinning its NOOK division into a separate company, which does not show much faith in their own brand. What's worse is that this show of uncertainty of wanting to separate from the failing device and it's eBook store will only just further distance the customers from the NOOK. Being that their eBooks have a special DRM scheme that does not allow their .epubs to work in other device, current users better hope this new company does not fold or they will be out of their entire NOOK eBook library.

Con

Uses a special DRM on their eBooks, any eBook purchased from B&N is not Adobe Digital Edition compliant

While B&N does use and read .epub on their devices, any eBook purchased from the B&N eBook store will not be able to be used in other .epub readers unless the DRM is stripped from said eBook.

Con

Store feels cluttered and unintuitve

The landing page for eBooks.com feels a bit cluttered and can be confusing to navigate to the users desired section.

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